Hyderabad: Equitable supply of drinking water to each one of the 68.06 lakh households in rural and urban areas of the State is expected to be one of the hallmarks of the Mission Bhagiratha programme. And any effort to cheat his or her neighbours by installing a pump to draw water faster, will be thwarted.

One of the goals of the programme is ensuring equitable and simultaneous supply of drinking water in a habitation or in a building with more than one housing unit. Given the illegal practice many people indulge in by installing electric pumps to draw water faster in a bid to get more water than their neighbours, the Mission Bhagiratha programme has found a simple solution to put an end to this menace.

Every programme beneficiary’s tap connection, will have in the pipeline leading to the tap, a simple flow control valve that will allow only a certain amount of water to flow from the tap.

“The connections are designed to deliver five litres of water a minute. Anyone attempt to install a pump to draw more water will fail as the flow control valve will shut the supply if the pressure of the flow is more than what the system is designed for,” according to the Mission’s consultant to the government and former Rural Water Supply chief engineer Jaganmohan Rao.

Unique feature
This feature is being implemented for the first time in the country in a public water supply programme, he said. Jaganmohan Rao was addressing the 5th Telangana Engineers Day at the Institution of Engineers here in the city on Wednesday.

In a detailed presentation on the programme, Rao said 98 per cent of the Mission Bhagiratha works had been completed and water was already being supplied to 5,530 habitations in the State. In all, Mission Bhagiratha’s target is to supply drinking water to 24,562 habitations in the State, covering 2.26 core people. “While the Central guidelines consider supply of 55 litres per head a day (LPD) in rural areas as meeting the requirements, the Telangana Government, through Mission Bhagiratha, has a target of supplying 100 LPD in rural areas, 135 LPD in municipalities and 150 LPD in municipal corporation areas,” he said.

Jaganmohan Rao said the socio-economic benefits from the supply of clean and healthy drinking water will be many and the government has asked UNICEF and Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS) to undertake a study on the extent of such benefits that will accrue to the people and the State because of Mission Bhagiratha.

Careful planning
The programme, once in full flow, will eliminate the dependence on groundwater for drinking water schemes too, he said. Before Mission Bhagiratha connections became active, the State had as many as 1,50,829 drinking water borewells-driven water supply schemes. Of these borewells, 32,422 failed in 2016. As many as 3,067 habitations had to be supplied drinking water through tankers in addition to hiring 1,083 private borewells to augment the supply, he said.

Jaganmohan Rao said the government was careful not to let existing drinking water infrastructure fall into disrepair and incorporated 19,221 major and minor structures such as overhead tanks and water treatment plants into the programme. Mission Bhagiratha also incorporated existing pipeline network of 18,565 km, he added.